Puerto Rico Returns

Well the day of our merciful final Liat flight had arrived, and against all odds there were no weird incidents at the airport.

I thought this old school luggage scale was amusing.

Not exaggerating, I think we took ten propeller plane flights in a week.

We had one last day in Puerto Rico before returning to the bitter cold of the Midwest. It felt funny because we had started our journey in Puerto Rico and it felt like an exotic place. After surviving the ups and downs of the Caribbean though, Puerto Rico felt much less foreign and much more like home.

We'd already covered Old San Juan so we branched out a little and visited the Bacardi Distillery. We didn't have a very good experience there. It's weird because throughout this trip there were lots of unpleasant events but the good must have outweighed them because I still would say this was overall a good trip.

Bacardi was nice enough but they have some operational issues. First we probably waited an hour to get in. And while there was lots of information online about the tour being free, that little detail had recently changed and now the tour was $12.

A nice employee was pouring cups of punch for everyone standing in line in the sun.

We learned about the bat symbol. There were bats in one of the company's early buildings. The end. That'll be twelve dollars please.

We visited a fake bar where a bartender taught us how to whip up some rum drinks.

Then came time for us to receive our "one" "free" drink, which surprise, we had to wait a really long time to receive. Like so long that it definitely was not worth the time we had to wait. If you are ever in Puerto Rico, give the Bacardi Tour a miss and thank me for doing your suffering for you.

Remember how I was explaining how the Epiphany is more important than Christmas around these parts? Well here are kids getting their picture taken with the Three Wise Men at a shopping mall. Santa was present for photos before Christmas to be fair.

So you know how pretty much every last hotel we've stayed in was weird in its own special way? Well this time ol' Lydia booked a room at the Howard Johnson Centro Cardiovascular San Juan. It was in a hospital. We had to walk through the emergency room entrance to get in at night, and the rooms were clearly converted hospital rooms, complete with extra wide doors for wheeling hospital beds through. Shudder.

The Puerto Rican Airport Debacle

We had to leave for our flight to our first new country of the trip, Antigua and Barbuda, around 1pm so we soaked up as much San Juan as we could beforehand.

This was the view from our hostel's balcony. Not too shabby.

Those little turrets sticking out from the city walls are a symbol of Puerto Rico, and are featured on many of their license plates.

Yet another interesting statue.

Our flight was at 3ish, so being the responsible travelers we are we left the hostel around 1 and arrived at the aiport around 1:30. We wouldn't actually board a plane until 10:30ish.

Our taxi dropped us off in the wrong place to begin with, so we waited in this strange line to get in the airport for a little while before we wised up.

Well Liat gave us an especially horrible version of the airline runaround. They delayed our flight multiple times and in time chunks that were just short enough that we didn't want to leave the airport. They made zero announcements during the 9 hours we were there. The only information we received was through other passengers or from waiting in line at the ticket counter. It was really insult to injury. There was some problem with the flight attendants not wanting to work overtime. Blah blah. We made it to Antigua and Barbuda so late that the rental car place was closed, so we apparently still have to pay for a rental car day that we didn't use. It was a mess. It was particularly scary because we would be flying Liat again multiple times in the coming days.

By the end of all the yelling and BS two of the airline desk ladies were crying.

We got very familiar with the airport during our abundant free time. Kinder Eggs are the best things ever.

The only free power outlet we could find was on the floor next to this USDA beagle brigade car.

Here's the pilot trying to explain why it's not his fault this airline is so bad.

Boo Liat. Boo.

We made it to our hostel in St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda around 1am. The manager was whining that we were supposed to have checked in at 5pm and I was thinking "back up or I will cut you!" Doing hard time at the airport changes a man.

A Full Day in Old San Juan

Well I use the term full day loosely because I woke up at 11, but you get the idea.

We read about this cool sounding dish, mofongo which is like a big pile of mashed plantains or cassava. You can get it with a meat or fish filling, in which case it is called mofongo relleno. I looked up some good restaurants for this interesting dish, and what do you know, there's a place called Cafe Puerto Rico that serves it right on Plaza de Colón where we are staying. Done deal.

We had a couple of rum punches while waiting. Lydia managed to pick up a delightful cough from one of her kids from school right before we went on vacation. I think that some good Caribbean water should fix that right up.

Lydia got an order of sorullitos de maíz, which are like little sweet corn meal hushpuppies.

The chicken mofongo came with a garlic cream sauce that was really good.

In San Juan at least, the police cars have blue and green lights. Culture shock. Too much.

I commented multiple times on how cool and plentiful the statues were in the city.

Many of the roads in Old San Juan were narrow little things paved with these really cool blue glazed bricks.

They are really big on the Three Kings around these parts. According to this article, in many cultures of Spanish origin, the Epiphany is more important than Jesus' birth, and the present toting kings are thrice the real deal. It does make sense that royalty would get you a way better present than a baby. Just sayin'. 

Kids write their wish lists to their favorite king (Melchor, Baltazar or Gaspar), and they leave out snacks for the Three Kings (and grass for their camels) before they go to bed. On January 6th, there are huge family gatherings with lots of traditional foods. It’s lots of fun to participate in these traditional celebrations.

Our first tourist stop of the day was the Castillo San Felipe del Morro. It is a fortress that began construction in 1539 by order of King Charles V of Spain to defend the port of San Juan.

I thought it was kind of cool that the place is a National Park even though it feels kind of foreign.

From right to left the flags flying above the fort are US, Puerto Rico, and the Cross of Burgundy, which is an old Spanish battle flag.

An army-vet park ranger explaining how you would get destroyed no matter what angle you attacked the fort from.

There was a cool lighthouse on top.

We decided this statue reminded us of Dr. Seuss.

I guess Old San Juan was walled in as well, and there are some giant doors remaining that used to control access to the city.

There was this wild biblical story diorama set up in some sort of religious building near the governor's mansion. It really reminded me of the trippy scenes at Rock City.

We overheard a tourguide tell the legend about the Capilla del Cristo that a guy in a horse race fell over the city wall at this spot and survived. He built this little chapel in thanks, and also to block the road so additional knuckleheads wouldn't fall over.

San Juan is home to the remains of Juan Ponce de Leon, explorer, conquistador, and first governor of Puerto Rico.

We changed gears at this point and took a little rum break.

We stopped at the Parrot Club for an appetizer. They had these awesome giant bread stick snack things that I demolished. They were slightly cheesy, reminiscent of Pepperidge Farm Snack Sticks.

Lady and the Tramp happened.

We stopped for a little beer sampler at Old Harbor Brewery. It was not good. It tasted like someone had just discovered that hops was a thing and needed every beer to taste like hops. Bleh.

Well our $5 entry fee to the National Park covered entry to another fort. So now refreshed, we got fortin' over at Castillo San Cristóbal. This one was built to repel land based attacks.

The US built some little bunkers on top of the fort during world war II. I thought that was cool.

We decided to do something a little bit less touristy and went and saw a baseball game. Our cab driver confirmed that tourists don't usually want to do that. I am so legit. 

Yadier Molina, catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals is apparently Puerto Rican. I did not know that.

The day's match up was the Cangrejeros (Crabbers) de Santurce and the Gigantes (Giants) de Carolina. The Crabbers were the home team but are apparently not good and got stomped. This was what the stands looked like 15 minutes before the game started. We were worried we were in the wrong place or wrong time. Nope.

The game was pretty dull so we took a quick intermission to check out the very impressive mall just across the street. It was packed with Christmas shoppers. I would say the stores are 75% what you would find in a mainland American mall. Especially amusing were all of the Christmas sweaters on sale at Old Navy. Don't really need those around here kids. Somebody needs a globe.

The Three Kings ganging up on poor Santa.